Mayor De Blasio Won’t Push For Property Tax Increase

Mayor Bill DeBlasio attend a roundtable discussion between parents of elementary school children and politicians.

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Mayor Bill de Blasio will not recommend any increase to New York City’s property-tax rate when he releases his preliminary budget proposal this month.

“We have no plans for a property tax increase,” Mr. de Blasio said Tuesday at a City Hall news conference, echoing statements he made during his campaign for mayor last year.

Mr. de Blasio is expected to release next week his preliminary budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1. It will be his first budget proposal as mayor.

While Mr. de Blasio said he isn’t seeking an increase in the tax rate, preliminary figures released by the city’s Department of Finance last month showed that tax-assessment rolls are due to rise by 8% beginning in July, far more than the city has been projecting. For many property owners, that could mean significantly higher taxes.

The assessment increase would be the second-highest gain since at least 1996, city figures show, after an 8.1% increase in the fiscal year ended in June 2008 at the peak of the last real estate boom.

A property tax increase may not be in the cards, but if the mayor gets his way, the wealthy in the city will get a tax increase.

Mr. de Blasio is seeking an increase in city income taxes on New Yorkers making $500,000 or more to pay for prekindergarten and after-school programs for middle school students. Unlike the property tax rate, which the City Council has the power to set, the city’s income tax is set by lawmakers in Albany.

The mayor faces an uphill battle to convince the state to give his tax proposal the green light.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who faces re-election this year, has firmly positioned himself against any tax increase. The governor has offered to pay for the mayor’s education initiatives with existing state funds, but Mr. de Blasio has said the city needs a reliable, steady funding source and will continue to push for an income tax increase.

During a news conference on Tuesday, the mayor repeatedly pointed to the fiscal challenges facing his administration as he prepares to release his first budget proposal. Contracts for all city employees, including more than 150 bargaining units, have expired, and city unions have been demanding retroactive raises for workers.

The open labor contracts create “tremendous fiscal uncertainty, and we don’t know even the timeline on which they will be settled,” Mr. de Blasio said.

“This is an unprecedented dynamic, and we’re going to have a huge fiscal challenge ahead,” the mayor said. “And one that should not have been handed to us. You know, the future should not have been mortgaged in this way, but it was, by the previous administration. And we will have to grapple with it.”

Last summer, in a speech that drew sharp criticism, Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, argued that the unusual labor situation has created an “unprecedented opportunity” for his successor to demand pension and health-care overhauls. Mr. Bloomberg suggested the lack of contracts was a positive.

“Thankfully, my successor will enter negotiations with enormous leverage, because union leaders will have gone about four years without new contracts—and that has never happened before,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They will not be able to wait another four years for new contracts.”